Trade and Financial Relations between India and Pakistan

In this chapter, I chart out how partition shifted the terms of trade between two points now divided by the boundary line. While, on the one hand, both governments made lofty declarations of carrying out trade with one another as independent nation states—taxable, and liable to regulations by both states—on the other, they were also forced to come to a series of arrangements to accommodate commercial transactions to continue in the way that they had always existed before the making of the boundary. In many instances, in fact, it was actually impossible to physically stop the process of commercial transactions between both sides of the border, and the boundary line. Therefore, the question this chapter is concerned with is the extent to which both governments’ positions were amenable to the necessities of contingency, demand, and genuine emergency, in the face of a great deal of rhetoric about how the Indian and Pakistani economies had to be bolstered on their own merits.

Evacuee Property

The Ministry of External Affairs was an instrumental institution in shaping the debate about how these rules ought to be fashioned on the basis of a reciprocity. In this chapter, I look at the various stages of the negotiations—how definitions hardened, and when, and the reasons why this was so. I track the changing ways in which this question was conceptualized, and the extent to which the role played by the foreign ministries and inter-dominion conferences on the question impacted the process. I argue that it was the principle of reciprocity that in the end was the pin that held up the structure of evacuee property legislation. In carrying out this exercise, the ministry was also adhering to a formulation that a more fruitful outcome would be where the question of property appropriation was more closely informed by similar pieces of legislation across the border.

Bilateral Solutions

In this chapter, I highlight how the administrative response to the immediate fallout of the partition, was determined foremost by how it could be bilaterally handled, rather than being governed by any other consideration—including, for instance, the necessity of bringing immediate relief to the law and order question. I examine how the Partition Council approached the question of setting up the foreign ministries for India and Pakistan in August, 1947, and the importance that was given to having a diplomatic architecture in place that could handle the inter-face between India and Pakistan on issues relating to abducted women, and the Punjab Boundary Force. In many ways, notwithstanding the glaring inadequacies of the state apparatus in being able to contain the violence around partition, what was given importance was the ability to produce a bilateral mechanism to deal with partition’s fallout.

Conclusion

1950, then, was an interesting year: it had all the makings of the sets of causes that bring about both war and peace between India and Pakistan. Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan had fulminated to their constituent assemblies over each other’s duplicity over the refugee question; but they had also gone ahead with the shaping of a correspondence on the No War Pact. No ‘permanent’ solution—war, peace, or any of the intervening shades in between—was put into place, but a series of ad hoc, interim measures that could be countenanced by both states were devised in the meanwhile to patch things over. What was acknowledged on both sides was that the way to a lasting stability lay in finding answers that could lay the ghosts of partition to rest once and for all. And, to some extent at least, both governments made concerted efforts to bring this about....

No War Pact

The No War Pact correspondence between Jawaharlal Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan is interesting for several reasons: its timing, the personalities, the possibilities it seemed to offer for the relationship ship, and the glimpses it offered into the world views of India and Pakistan during the 1950s. The Evacuee Property Conferences, as well as the refugee crisis in Bengal formed the immediate context in which Liaquat Ali Khan and Nehru opened negotiations on a possible No War Pact. In many ways, moreover, the correspondence also shows how deeply connected the shaping of foreign policy was with domestic politics—India’s and Pakistan’s international relations were shaped out of the domestic concerns of both nation. One reason that the correspondence was taking place at all was that it could offer the possibility of some movement on the questions of water and evacuee property. The correspondence offered an opportunity for India and Pakistan to clarify their positions internationally as mutually exclusive entities: at the same time, it was also for progress in leading to more accommodative outcomes for talks around the agenda of separation. This chapter shows that the business of going about disentangling oneself from the other did not in fact necessarily mandate international stances that had to be hostile to one another: they could also be built upon an attempt at dialogue.

Indus Waters

In this chapter, I wish to offer a pre-history to the Indus Water Treaty of 1960. Since the period that this book covers ends at 1952, and since I wish to situate the discussions around the treaty as a means of implementing the partition, it becomes particularly important to understand the considerations that affected the early stages of the Indus negotiations. I argue that although the Indus Waters Treaty, negotiated under the auspices of the World Bank, was signed only in 1960, over a decade after the partition, many of its clauses had built upon the assumptions that had been formed by 1950. Indeed, by 1951, both the source of the problem—the fear that enough water would not be allowed to flow in to Pakistan from the canals that had been built before the partition—as well as its solution—that new canal networks would have to be developed in a way that would satisfy the separate requirements of both India and Pakistan—were already apparent. The discussions around Indus waters in the years that immediately followed the partition, offer valuable insights into how the implementation of the partition was conceptualized.

The Nehru–Liaquat Pact

In April 1950, Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan met in New Delhi, and signed a declaration that their governments would protect the interests of minorities in both their countries. Both governments would now be accountable to each other on the issue of the protection of rights of minorities; and the declaration set out a variety of infrastructural elements by which its requirements would be implemented. In its definitions, scope and flexibilities, the Pact was amongst the more accommodative pieces of writing in the history of the bilateral relationship, but what was particularly interesting about it was that it was also in the political interests of both governments to sign to it, even in the midst of what seemed like catastrophic developments leading to war.

Shaping International Personalities

In this chapter I wish to consider the patterns of statehood that India and Pakistan chose to emulate, and to enquire deeper into their provenance. In many ways, their approaches to determining the course of their international behavior look remarkably similar: informed by the same objectives, and tempered by the same considerations. What also comes across is the fact that both India and Pakistan accepted a common set of rules about how states ought to behave—their pursuits within these frameworks might have occasionally varied, but their objectives were defined by a common set of concerns.

Introduction

The bilateral relationship between India and Pakistan occupies a strange place at the heart of the process of state-making in the subcontinent in the years that followed the partition. The introduction details what topics each chapter will cover.